Ann Widdecombe

The former Tory Minister writes exclusively for the Daily Express

We can’t charge the vulnerable for NHS

THE suggestion that charges may soon be levied for using the NHS has caused a predictable outcry, although it is worth stressing that this comes from a think tank rather than a political party, but politicians will have to find the courage to face up to the reality of the NHS sooner rather than later.

Lesley Dobson takes the blood pressure of the new chief executive of NHS, Simon Stevens[GETTY]

The reality is simple: it cannot cope with the level of demand made upon it and is resorting to rationing disguised as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, queues, postcode lotteries and ever lengthening waiting times to see the doctor.

It cannot cope because it was set up on three false premises: that insurance would play a significant part in the funding; that as we all got healthier demand would decline; that the demographics would stay roughly the same.

By the late 1980s the National Insurance Fund could just about cover pensions and contributory benefits, relied on the occasional subvention from general taxation and offered no more than a drop in the ocean towards the burgeoning NHS budget.

As for the demographics, the impact of the huge growth in the elderly population and large-scale immigration speak for themselves

As for the demographics, the impact of the huge growth in the elderly population and large-scale immigration speak for themselves.

It is however the second false premise which is the most telling for we are now doing routinely in our hospitals procedures that would have been science fiction to the founding fathers of the NHS and the explosion of medical and surgical science has sent demand towards infinity.

With the exception of the Callaghan government all administrations have overseen vast increases in real-terms spending on the NHS and they have all run hard to stand still.

I can remember the days when if you rang the doctor you saw him that day and when you spent a fortnight in hospital for something as routine as appendicitis.

Now every service is stretched taut.

So the NHS can no longer meet every last demand that is made upon it but political cowardice means that successive leaders pretend that it can.

Sooner or later those who can are going to have to start paying but that should not mean all and certainly not those who couldn’t pay if they starved for a month and who are the very ones the NHS was set up to help in the first place.

It's time Kate went to the hairdresser

The photograph of Prince George with his parents and canine friend was a joy but Kate’s hair is beginning to look messy.

Long, free-flowing locks are difficult to control and the royal ones look as if they have abandoned their previous docility and now have a mind of their own.

Perhaps HRH should experiment with some new styles.

That would, of course, be bad news for the thousands who have painstakingly grown their own hair in imitation but would certainly bring a fillip to hairdressers all over the country if a new style was suddenly in demand.

Arrested and detained for voicing your beliefs

A STREET preacher, John Craven, has won £13,000 in compensation after being arrested when he answered a question about homosexuality by quoting from the Bible.

It is unlikely that the two boys who asked him did not know that his response would be discouraging but they complained to a passing policeman who immediately and quite improperly arrested the preacher.

The forces of law and order, which never seem to be about if you are being mugged, kept him locked up for 19 hours, refusing him food, water and medication.

The Christian Institute calls it one of the worst cases it has encountered but it isn’t unique.

What about the café owner threatened with closure because he had a rolling display of scripture and someone decided to be insulted when a piece about homosexuality was shown?

What about Adrian Smith, the housing official, who was demoted with a 40 per cent pay cut because he made moderate comments on his private Facebook site about gay marriage?

A judge found in his favour but he was not reinstated.

John Craven’s victory establishes the principle: that we are free to voice our beliefs without threat of arrest by bullying agents of the state.

Paper maps have a place

ALAS, the days when every schoolchild was taught how to read an Ordnance Survey map and set a compass on it appear to be numbered, as OS sales have shrunk by a third while people turn instead to the internet.

As a result paper maps will no longer be available in bookshops.

So in future do we expect to see teams of youngsters glued to their iPads when they set out into the wilder regions to win their Duke of Edinburgh awards? Are iPads now a necessary piece of equipment for joining a Scout Group?

Where does it stop? With climbers dangling from ropes while they download instructions for Everest?

The climate scaremongers

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced the latest of its scare stories, insisting that climate change is going to bring heatwaves, droughts and such early springs that all the birds will be confused.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Remember when that same body claimed that the Himalayan glaciers were going to melt and that 55 per cent of Holland is under sea level? Fools.

What should irritate all of us as taxpayers is that Britain continues to pour money into this rot.

They can’t even explain why their prediction of rising temperatures was wrong and why there has been no warming since before the turn of the millennium.

THE reaction to the Budget should embolden Cameron and Osborne to produce a genuinely Conservative manifesto for the election.

Maggie would have been proud of the pensions reforms because she recognised that people like to decide what happens to their own money.

Give us a manifesto which abolishes inheritance tax and reduces income tax and the nation will feel the Tories are back from some strange planet where they obsessed about A lists, gay marriage, wind turbines and climate change.